Estimating Large Jobs! Whats your trick?

I like to actually stand in a position and fantasize as to what my crew could accomplish in one day. Block out other aspects until a day's work is reached then block out that work while the next day is considered. Day increments are manageable to imagine to me. Bidding a 2 week or 1 month job all seems to work that way for me...just keep moving on to more work until I hit the day limit incl. stumps etc if included.

But if truth be known...I really don't like to be on a property for more than a couple/three days and that is part of why I like this job. Hit...collect...run. I was on a country club for about a month once. I got to be a real unhappy camper.
 
Last edited:
You can't look at another company's bid that is lower than yours and say that they under bid the job. It's all about comparing operating costs vs production capacity.

On big jobs In looking for ways to save money. Can I leave equipment over night? Can I chip on the ground? Can I rent something specialized to make the week faster? Be creative.

Royce it seems like you don't want to miss this job. Come up with a number that is comfortable and that motivates you, but isn't comparable to hitting the powerball. You stand to make a lot of money off this client.
 
I've done just one job that seems comparable in size. Well in tree count at least. It was about 90 trees in a wind row along an HOA.

I sketched a map as I walked indicating trees >6", and put man or crew hour estimates on each section.

That gave me a total of onsite man hours, divided by how many hours would work in a day, and I had a day count. We charge for mobilization /day, so that was added on.

We brought in an mini excavator to forward the logs for a log truck, so that rental and operator time was added.

I ended up adding 10% for margin of error if I recall correctly.


The point is, I feel most comfortable walking myself through each tree or group of trees.
 
dmd said:
You can't look at another company's bid that is lower than yours and say that they under bid the job. It's all about comparing operating costs vs production capacity.

On big jobs In looking for ways to save money. Can I leave equipment over night? Can I chip on the ground? Can I rent something specialized to make the week faster? Be creative.

Royce it seems like you don't want to miss this job. Come up with a number that is comfortable and that motivates you, but isn't comparable to hitting the powerball. You stand to make a lot of money off this client.
Click to expand...

True about the lowest price. I my residential market I am the lowest bidder on certain jobs. However, that used to bother me, but then I realized that the competition was higher because it was going to take them all day. I bid the jobs to take a morning and then we were off to do another job. So in the end, I was the lowest bidder but made my money by doing two jobs in the same amount of time it took my competitor to do 1.
Yeah, I do not want to miss on this job. I think I am going to put a price on it that I am comfortable with, and know that it would be better to get them as a client for the next 20 years than one good, highly profit job, never to hear from them again. This account could be in the area of 20-30K per year. I want that!!
 
Most com. entities are gonna get 2 or 3 bids as mandatory. Emotions probably won't enter into loyalty. They are loyal to whoever they are representing and themselves if no one else. So to contract at a low bid probably won't elicit a return visit next time, sans competition if you know what I mean. Bring em home made pies, low bid, do a spotless job....come next bid in that $20 to 30k annl. budget...and you will be right on the train to writing another bid to get in. But at least you are on the train.
 
Hope you get this job Royce. It would be nice to see what your chipper can do with the big stuff.

Vet made a good point before about grinding some stumps to get your equipment closer to the far trees. Even if they don't want the stumps done it would help with the obstacles just grinding a pathway down to ground level.
 
dmd said:
You can't look at another company's bid that is lower than yours and say that they under bid the job. It's all about comparing operating costs vs production capacity.
Click to expand...

Agreed.



I started this post yesterday but got side tracked:
ward said:
Great question in this thread. I almost never actually get the really large jobs--and I don't think its because my prices are too high but because the competition underbids the work. I think that there is an inability of most estimators to do exactly what you are trying to do: factor all of your costs and give an accurate quote for large, diverse work. Customer solicits 3 bids on removing 10 White Oaks (lets say): outfit A bids it at $10k; outfit B bids it at $8k; outfit C bids it at $6500. These are reasonable estimates to each estimator. The spread is large, though, isn't it? What would you do as a customer with these large spreads? Thats right: most will go with the lower or middle bid (because they will be saving thousands of dollars). It doesn't matter that outfit A's bid was appropriately priced given the amount of work. The fact remains that B and C underbid the job and they will get it as a result. Large jobs are hard to win in a competitive bidding environment in which your competition is apt to underbid the job because of their own inability to actually calculate the true amount of work. Customer wins.
Click to expand...


There are plenty of low ballers out there, but being the low bid doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong either... that's a common and in my opinion myopic view point. The point of business is to make profit, plain and simple. Just because you're the low bid doesn't mean you're not making money. I am a HUGE tiny company with no employees and ~$400k of equipment at my disposal. I am sure my competition thinks I'm selling at cost to pay the bills on all that equipment and that's perfectly fine and I even prefer for them to think that. I had one competitor tell me "I need to meet your finance guy!" I took it as a backhand/snide remark said with a smile. Good for him, the majority of his low bids go towards paying his 4-6 guys he has on nearly every job. Also he commonly puts out some sub par work, although he does a good job with cleanup usually.


I recently had the very similar situation 13 trees to be removed, the bids were $10k, $7.5k, and $6750. I was the C bidder, the low ball hack. The $10k bid was planning on a crane of some description, I don't know about B. The customer predictably went with the low bid. With a 3-4 man crew and my next purchase, we will knock out the job in a day.
 
I am finished with the bid for this project. I will let you all know how it goes. I priced it so I believe I can make some money on it, but not going to be a super home run 50% profit job. I am going to take one more look at it when I submit the bid to just make sure I did not miss anything.
 
Royce, do you sketch maps to help organize?

Do you have a checklist of things, so you don't forget to ask about a septic drain field in the middle of the forest, or a shallow water line, check for a utility going to an out of area structure, etc?
 
southsoundtree said:
Royce, do you sketch maps to help organize?

Do you have a checklist of things, so you don't forget to ask about a septic drain field in the middle of the forest, or a shallow water line, check for a utility going to an out of area structure, etc?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I send a questionnaire about this issues with any other questions I have in a email. Then I can continue to refer to if as need if I forget something.

I do not sketch maps. Not a great drawer. What would I be sketching? The layout of the land, the trees and what can be accomplished in one day? I like the idea if I was a better drawer. But I suppose I could do an aerial view and use a symbol to represent a tree.
 
ROYCE said:
True about the lowest price. I my residential market I am the lowest bidder on certain jobs. However, that used to bother me, but then I realized that the competition was higher because it was going to take them all day. I bid the jobs to take a morning and then we were off to do another job. So in the end, I was the lowest bidder but made my money by doing two jobs in the same amount of time it took my competitor to do 1.
Yeah, I do not want to miss on this job. I think I am going to put a price on it that I am comfortable with, and know that it would be better to get them as a client for the next 20 years than one good, highly profit job, never to hear from them again. This account could be in the area of 20-30K per year. I want that!!
Click to expand...
A few thoughts….
Know who the competition is or could be. This is a large job for us but small for a land clearing company. Who are they and why aren't they bidding on this job? They can come in here and do this in a much more efficient fashion with the right equipment. Are they unable to meet the timetable or is it not quite big enough for them to go after?

Be mindful of the terrain and wear and tear on your equipment. Anticipate breakdowns, thrown tracks, etc….

Good luck!
 
ROYCE said:
What would I be sketching? The layout of the land, the trees and what can be accomplished in one day?.
Click to expand...

My sketches for this purpose are basically chicken scratch for my use to help me in case I get distracted mid estimate. I could finish another day, or say someone walks up to talk and now I forgot if I was half way through that group or this group...

If I'm making a report, or sometimes on a big project I will annotate a sattilite image on the computer. Some will take that as a sign of professionalism, along with clear specifications and that can set your bid in front of the pack regardless of cost. Obviously it depends on the clients goals and priorities.
 
$2.99 Bic four color pen!! A cheap tool for pen and paper types.

I will sometimes group a customer's different work priorities with help from a sketch. Price for the 4 high priority trees shown in red, price for secondary trees in green, etc.



Helps me be sure I am getting all the trees. Let's me pick up after a distraction, as with Evan.

Helps me to break down the "elephant" into bites, and plan the work. In this case, its a clearing, so more straight forward.

Picture speaks a thousand words.

Useful for the crew, if you have to leave, or something.




Try the Skitch app. You can take pictures and add text, arrows, lines, etc. So far, it seems pretty easy. There is an option to touch the tablet screen (haven't tried on my phone) to focus on that area, and expose that portion of the photo appropriately, then touch the shutter button. So often its hard to focus/ expose on the appropriate section of tree.
 
With regards to grouping on large jobs... I will come up with the "average" tree and count the outliers that require significantly more effort than the "average". If there's 125 trees, 115 are "average" and 10 need more work, I would take the amount per average tree times 115 then add in the outliers, which may have their own "average."

If there are 125 trees total and 2/3 are 12-14" DBH, that's 83 trees to go through the chipper and 42 that will have logs. The 42 are outliers. You could treat them as 42 trees sitting on 42 logs. The 42 trees would be average and the 42 logs would be outliers. The logs value may offset the collection and trucking, which would mean you could treat the whole job as average. If the collection and trucking should be added in, add that amount for the logs.

Another thing that could make a tree an outlier on a job like this is the difference between having to set a rope to pull a tree vs it being weighted to fall on its own. For me, that difference would be if I could use my excavator to push the trees or if I had to set a rope and pull them due to lean or access. Being able to push the trees with the excavator vs having to set a rope would increase the time getting the tree on the ground by ~5-10x thus making it an outlier. When we have jobs dropping trees in gross, we use a 660 with a 20" bar. With access and 125 tress f the size you mentioned in a relatively small area would only take a 3-4 hours to have on the ground with 2 people working.

Here's a job we did dropping 34 trees. Best I remember it took 1.5 hours, maybe 2. $1500. The majority needed to be pushed, and several were quite decent in diameter.
 
@ LumberJack, that makes great sense to me. I will look the area over this week when I go back and try and look at it that way. I like the idea of grouping the trees in an average scenario and then adding the extra trees in after words. I am going to give that a try and see how that looks on paper.

@southsoundtree: This is totally a wedging job. Even wedging with a little added push with the mini loader. I am actually looking at renting a mini from a local rental company. They purchased a BMG so I can get a bobcat M55 brand new with a brand new BMG grapple for about 190 a day. My plan is to have a staging area where the chipper and log truck will be. Drop tree, one mini grapes the top and takes to chipper, one mini grabs the logs and goes to log truck. Feller moves on to another tree. This way the job is staying organized and tidy and we are cranking out trees. I forgot to mention that this job is complete level and can be accessed from all sides. It's in a park like setting with the trees in the center. They want to clean this out and make the lawn bigger.
 
Do you have any pictures of the job layout? Even satellite pictures? If it's like I think, I would fell the trees with a 2 man crew and something that could just push the trees (damn using wedges). These trees are tiny sounding, most should be pushable with the mini unless they've got some good lean on them. I do almost entirely removals... If I was going to rent a machine for this job it certainly wouldn't be another mini skid. Without seeing the job and knowing how close you could get the log truck and chipper to the trees, it's tough to give more advice on how I would set up the work flow.


Here's a job I did, 40 trees removed solo in 12 hours including 4 hours of drive time to haul the equipment in and out. Chips stayed on site, logs stayed on site on the other side of the dam. The tree portion of this job was $2600, stumps were another $1050. This job was also to increase yard space.

 
treevet said:
Lot clearing jobs with no prof. skills needed are very unusual for a tree company to win imo.
Click to expand...

I agree and I am keeping that in mind. Like was mentioned above, this is not our specialty. Anyone in my area can drop these trees, clean them up. What I have going for me is I have done some great pruning for this company. I really think I have a good chance. I just have to be smart with my numbers. What is hard for me is I have never really done something like this with my own company. I have done lots of these jobs but when I worked for other companies with different equipment and employees. I am still trying to build my company. It's almost February and it's snowing here, this job would be great to keep us busy for the first few weeks of February if we can not get to other trees in residential areas.
Also I am trying to build my tool box of equipment. Trying to figure out what would make this job faster? What can I purchase that will speed this up? I believe I have enough equipment right now to get it done very competitively, but speeding it up is where I could make more of a profit.
 
Hey Royce, if these were hardwoods would you charge the same? In my area there are no professional skills required for hardwood clearing. One to ten acre lots are cleared for free for the "firewood".
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

New threads New posts

Back
Top Bottom